Conspirare plans to rock the soul with African American spirituals

By Jeanne Claire van Ryzin
AMERICAN-STATESMAN ARTS WRITER
Sunday, May 31, 2009

Sometimes life throws you a detour. Sometimes, that detour can delight if it's one you've meant to travel.

Craig Hella Johnson, artistic director of four-time Grammy-nominated Austin choir Conspirare, had planned to celebrate the end of the Long Center's first full arts season this June with a major new work by much-heralded American composer Eric Whitacre. The venture was to be recorded at the Long Center and released by the Harmonia Mundi label.

The ambitious Whitacre project will still happen. (It's scheduled for 2010.) But when the crashing economy stalled fundraising for the expensive venture, Johnson had to come up with a Plan B.

But that Plan B — "Rock My Soul: A Celebration of the African American Spiritual" — is hardly a compromise for Johnson.

"Rock My Soul" will unite on the stage for the first time in its 10 years every one of Conspirare's three choirs: the 105-member symphonic choir, the 65-member Conspirare Children's Choir and the elite 33-member core choir.

Do the math: That will be 203 singers on stage in the Long Center's Dell Hall for the two performances. Along with noted musicians — James Polk on piano, percussionist Thomas Burritt and bass player Michael Stevens — the singers will be joined by Grammy-nominated jazz trumpeter and composer Hannibal Lokumbe.

Lokumbe, a 60-year-old native of Smithville, relocated to Central Texas in 2005 after Hurricane Katrina forced him from his New Orleans home. Though he's performed all over the world with people such as Gil Evans and other jazz greats and had his compositions played by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Lokumbe will be playing in Austin for the first time Saturday and June 7.

The program includes two choral works by Lokumbe, "I Will Go to the Lord" and "Ferrari" ("ferrari" is the Swahili word for "rejoice"). Lokumbe also will debut a poem, "The Book of Song," which he'll present in pieces in between song sets during the 90-minute intermissionless concert.

For his part, Johnson, who has long included traditional gospels and spirituals on Conspirare programs, has always wanted to create an entire program that celebrates the historically African American song form.

Johnson admits to giving much thought to how he and his mostly white chorus would find its voice presenting repertoire from a musical tradition originated by black Americans.

"As a classical choir, we've always been about celebrating truly great American music," he says, adding that there's probably not a more seminal American song tradition than gospels and spirituals. "But we are also interpreters of many different kinds of music. And we're not proposing that we're presenting the final interpretation of any music.

"If we're to traverse the barriers that so often remain silent, we have to often just go in feet first and with open minds and hearts. Music is a language that invites us into the conversation."

For Lokumbe, the collaboration with Conspirare speaks of universal human connections. "It's like (vocal great) Paul Robeson said — in all the folk music of the world, there's one common thread, and to my mind that means that to all human beings of the world, there's one common thread," Lokumbe says. "All great music asks of people who are singing it or playing it that they have respect for it."

As musicians, Johnson said he and the choir were challenged by the gospel repertoire's demands that the singers "be utterly present," he says. "We have to focus on a broad tonal color palette, going from a hum to a whisper to deep cry to shouts of joy. The question for us is: How do we sing from the belly of our being?"

It's been a busy season for Johnson and Conspirare. In addition to its regular concert season, in October the choir recorded a concert at the Long Center that was broadcast nationwide in March on PBS along with the release of a CD and DVD of the show.

In February, Johnson attended the Grammy Awards ceremony for the second time in just three years as Conspirare's CD "Threshold of Night: Music of Tarik O'Regan" was nominated for Best Choral Performance and Best Classical Album. "Threshold" didn't come home with a Grammy, but the honor of seeing the nonprofit choir he founded once again get recognized by the international music industry thrilled and humbled him.

"It was exciting just to be in the same room as all the other (Grammy nominees)," Johnson says.

Then in April, Johnson released his first solo CD, "Thorns on the Rose," a collection of popular and original songs that includes collaborations with singer-songwriter Eliza Gilkyson, among others.

Johnson said that though this concert of gospels and spirituals came a little sooner than he had planned, perhaps, in a serendipitous way, the music's origins are well-pegged to our current more humbling times.

"This (music) is about deep, hard human expression," he says. "It's a human song."

jvanryzin@statesman.com; 445-3699

'Rock My Soul: A Celebration of the African American Spiritual'

When: 8 p.m. Saturday, June 6; 2 p.m. June 7

Where: Long Center, 701 W. Riverside Drive.

Cost: $20-$50 (ages 6-17 half-price)

Info: 476-5775, www.conspirare.org